Koders is so very *hot*
As a librarian who was a web developer in a past life, I love playing with code. I don’t code hard core from scratch as much as I used to, but I still have a knack for it. I was an accidental coder, since I just fell into the profession, and learned everything on the job, so to me, coding needs to have an impetus, a motivation. However, people like my significant other, who are born coders, code just to code and make stuff, treating it more like an art than a means to an end. Kinda makes me sound like a poser. 
While I still code on occasion, my priorities have shifted, so I often look for shortcuts in making stuff work. I’ll go to developer.com, sourceforge.net, or webdeveloper.com, look for the code I need, comparing to what I’ve written to see where it can help me save time, and use what I can, with the proper attributions to the code authors in my comments.
Thanks to a link off of ResourceShelf, I have discovered Koders.com. Koders.com has now made my quest for code way easier, and given me a simpler way to look at code to see what’s being done with, say, java or javascript these days, and how it’s being done. Their spiders hunt down and index any open source code on the web, and index it for your searching pleasure. The interface is clean and sparkly fresh, with a clear bent towards coders, but easy enough for a code layperson to at least poke at it. There’s more information about it the NewsForge Q&A of founder and chief architect, Darren Rush.
As is the case with code online, some code is better commented than others, so it’s easier to use. Comments will often tell you who made the code, under what conditions you can use it, and how to contact the creator. This is really the safest code to use from a copyright perspective, since you know the exact intent of the author, and from a functionality perspective, since it has built-in instructions for how to make it go. Tons of code on the web is uncommented and uncredited, but if you know some code, you can tell what’s really original sensational stuff, or what is more “common knowledge”-ish code, where everyone pretty much codes a specific web page widget the same way.
Browsing commented code is an awesome way to learn it, or at least get a sense of what everything does. Downloading it, playing with it, breaking it, and fixing it, and/or doing it all in conjunction with a tutorial of some sort, is even better. Koders.com is a little less overwhelming than most code hunt sites, so even if you’re not a coder, you can get around.
Tags: technology
